


Duties of a King

by CharlotteDaBookworm



Series: Galahdian!Kings [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Galahdian Culture, Galahdian Royalty, Gen, Nyx is King of Galahd, One Shot, Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 14:28:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16120397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharlotteDaBookworm/pseuds/CharlotteDaBookworm
Summary: In which Nyx shows everyone what he is





	Duties of a King

He was dragged into the throne room in chains, braids awry and clothes scruffy as he spat curses at everyone and everything. “And you. You’re nothing but a fucking hypocrite, Your _Majesty_. You claim to care for us, for our people, and then you let us be treated like we’re less than nothing – less than the very dirt you stand on – while you sit here in your fancy palace eating your expensive food!”

 

“Watch how to speak to your King!”

 

The Galahdian man sneered. “He ain’t no king o’ mine.” He spat, incensed.

 

“No,” Nyx said, stepping forward from his place in the shadows into the light – sunlight glinting off of the obsidian bead in his hair. “But he is mine.”

 

“Ulric…!” He paled rapidly, before seeming to draw himself and regain his resolve. “So what? Who the fuck cares what you think? You’re just as bad as the _Lucians_. You stand there in that fucking uniform, playing politics and fighting for Lucis, while your people suffer and starve. How dare you-!”

 

Nyx tilted his head slightly, his face the picture of innocent curiosity even as his eyes brightened to the blue-white of lightning on the horizon. “What?”

 

There was silence.

 

“No, no. Do go on. How dare I _what_ , Jonah?” Jonah blanched completely white. “Did you think that I didn’t know who you are? Jonah, youngest child of Maya. Your mother was killed in the fall, and your older sister Evelyn was a Glaive who died on a mission not a month ago. Do I need to go on?” A beat. Two. Nyx raised his eyebrows expectantly. “ _Well?”_

 

He just scowled and shook his head, refusing to say a word.

 

Nyx just sighed disappointedly and waited, keeping his gaze focused on the man in front of him – he’d get an answer eventually, unlike the Lucians. That was why he’d convinced the King to let him do this. _(He needed to know how many of his people were involved in this little assassination plot)_.

 

A little over a minute past before the man broke. “How _dare_ you betray our people like this Ulric! You _know_ how we suffer, how we are oppressed, at the hands of the Lucians – and yet you stand by and do _nothing_! You swore your loyalty to another King – to an _outsider_ , blood-kin to the Betrayer – and you betray your people in doing so.”

 

“I,” Nyx said softly, body language relaxed. It just caused Jonah to pale even further, until his pallor was almost corpse-like. “Am _protecting_ our people. If that means swearing loyalty to Lucis, then I shall do so gladly. Everyone agreed before we came that this was the best option.”

 

His words only made Johan angrier. “We only need protecting because _you lost our home!_ What sort of King are you? To allow our islands to fall to the enemy? To not even try to reclaim them? To let our people live oppressed and suffering instead of trying to help?”

 

And now he could feel the eyes of everyone in the throne room on him – could hear the shocked mutterings as a secret kept for millennia was revealed. Still, he closed his eyes in grief for a moment – remembering his home as it had been when he’d last seen it, bloodstained ruins and burning trees and bomb-craters – before banishing the image.

 

“And what would you have me do Jonah?” Nyx asked softly, quietly, _dangerously_. “Would you have me sacrifice our children – sons and daughters of Galahd – just to reclaim mere land? Would you have me whittle our numbers down even further, drive more clans to extinction, lose more of our culture? Would you have me send our people to their deaths, simply to drive Niflheim out of land that we don’t even _need_?”

 

“I miss our home Jonah, just as much as you do.” For a moment he longed for the taste of salt and smoke in the air, for the greens of the jungles and the peaks of the mountains and the sands of the canyons and the waters of the beaches, for the storms and the coeurl packs and the presence of Ramuh in the very land itself. He longed for his _home_. “And I understand your grief.” Selena’s face flashed through his mind, his mothers, the faces of all of his people that he had lost over the years. “But I am King of Galahd – and Galahd is not the _land_. Galahd is my people, and it always has been. I will not _sacrifice_ my people just so that I can be a King of **_Ruins_**.”

 

Outside the citadel, lightning flashed across the clear sky – Ramuh agreeing with the words of his Chosen. The brief flare of light illuminated Nyx from behind, making him look otherworldly and regal and deadly and every inch the King that he was.

 

“I am King of Galahd, and my first duty is to my people. _All of my people_. In your grief, Jonah, you seem to have forgotten that.”

 


End file.
